December 2, 2012

Seth MacFarlane is the creator of Family Guy and several other cartoon series, recognized for his immature and vulgar jokes. Ted is not that different in this regard, but a lot better at it than his other works.

Looking at the box office results shows clearly that he made a lot of money out of it, which success many never expected to be as high as they got with strong competition like The Dark Knight Rises. The question is, how he could get even woman to be excited about his newest work.

The premise of a best buddy movie is clearly targeted at men. They do stupid stuff like smoking weed and talking all day long about women, old TV-shows, breasts, women, work, beer and not to forget the most important topic: women. Thats all they do in the first third of the movie and some of the jokes are really funny and less vulgar as i expected him to be. Its a bit like hangover in this regard, only with two guys instead of the whole wolfpack as it is in hangover. The fewer troublemakers doesn't mean less trouble. It just means less physical damages and more problems with relationships. Who had knew that the heart of a teddybear could be as fluffy as it "shell"? Yes, it won't be a pure bromance story with many half naked girls, as it is hinted in the headline above, there will be a part specialy for women too...

The elements to lure even woman into liking it is as easy to guess as it
could be. The one who talk about this dirty stuff is a cute little
teddy bear and the more surprising thing is, that it actually worked.
Just through adding this simple fact and without changing the rest he took the chance to reach both genders at the same time. If everything was as easy as that. But that wasn't everything he did. The latter half is the exact opposite of the first and changes the focused audience from men to women entirely. Now the jokes are nearly extinct and a heart warming love story are taking their place. The story begins to take itself more serious and tries to reach your deepest feelings you never knew i ever had. Every scene tries to be tear jerking without missing any available cliche. What does we learn? Men got their favored material in the beginning to take their girlfriends with them to the movie. The girls like the premise of a cute teddy bear and enjoy it more and more till the happy end. Both of them get half of what they expected, but McFarlane get double as much people to watch with this compromise. The question is now if you should add elements to your story to excite both genders or stay true to one of them and focus entirely on it. Suzanne Collins did the same with her YA-Adult novel series "Hunger Games". She put the love story in the middle of a ruthless, bloody battle. You may find something worth adding, but don't forget that to much of it could ruin the experience of one gender completely and left a swallow bitter taste for both of them.